The Money You Save on WooCommerce Will Cost You in Set-up Time
May 21, 2021
The Money You Save on WooCommerce Will Cost You in Set-up Time
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with WooCommerce
I help clients with their WordPress sites that use WooCommerce. WooCommerce is not business software that I would use internally. Rather, it is a consumer product aimed at people who want to use WordPress as the platform for their e-commerce website. WooCommerce keeps track of both product inventory and orders. In addition, it provides templates for the presentation of products, a cart, and a checkout page.
- Keeps track of product inventory, including details of product variations such as colors and sizes if required.
- Keeps track of orders so that the shopkeeper has one place to log in and see the status and history of orders to her shop.
- Creates shop-related pages automatically. Once you add one or more products, they will automatically appear on your shop home page. Additionally, pages for viewing shopping carts and for checking out are automatically created.
- WooCommerce does not come with support for any payment gateway out of the box. Setting up each payment gateway requires an extra plugin, each of which has its own requirements for configuration. In some sense, this can't be helped, as each gateway has to be set up differently. However, WooCommerce could have provided a "wizard" to guide users through the process for the major payment gateways.
- WooCommerce does not make it easy to set up shipping solutions. This has been a major headache for my clients.
- WooCommerce does not provide printable packing slips or invoices out of the box. Although I know of a plugin that does an admirable job of adding this feature, it seems like something that should be part of the package.
- WooCommerce does not have truly first-class templates for showcasing products. In this aspect, it is way behind Squarespace and Wix.
WooCommerce and Shopify both permit essentially limitless customization. However, WooCommerce runs on PHP, a commonly used development language with a thriving community, whereas Shopify uses Liquid, a relatively obscure programming language, in its backend. I'm not I would consider Wix and Squarespace to exactly be competitors since they are intended for people who are looking for a quick, inexpensive solution.
Do you think WooCommerce delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with WooCommerce's feature set?
No
Did WooCommerce live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of WooCommerce go as expected?
No
Would you buy WooCommerce again?
Yes